How The Lack Of A Universal Basic Income Leaves Us Vulnerable To Pandemics

With the COVID-19 pandemic taking hold around the world, many people now realise that the economic foundations of our society are much more fragile than they had seemed. The disruption to global supply chains from the Wuhan coronavirus is just beginning to have an effect. As this essay will show, much of the pain that we will suffer this year could have been avoided if we had had a universal basic income.

Nothing gives a person more power over another group of people than that group’s desperation. The more desperate people are, the less money they will be willing to work for, and the shittier the workplace conditions they will be willing to accept. The ruling class doesn’t want to give up the power that widespread desperation and poverty give them. so they promote more of it.

The major argument against a UBI is that people need a certain level of coercion before they are willing to work. Without the threat of starvation or being kicked out of their house for not making their rent payments, people won’t do the amount of work that their rulers consider acceptable. Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen is the logic.

Modern events like the COVID-19 pandemic show that this way of thinking has made our society much weaker than it needed to be.

A forestry exporter in Gisborne recently complained that the pandemic had halved the income of his business. Because Chinese workers are being kept at home to prevent further spread of the virus, there is no-one to unload the boats in the docks. This means that forestry exporters can’t send any product to China, and so have to shut down a large part of their operation.

Without income, this forestry exporter has found themselves needing to lay off staff. Getting laid off is a highly stressful event at the best of times – when it comes at the same time as your entire industry is shutting down because of a coronavirus pandemic, then one also has to deal with the fear of not being able to find new work. Those who fail at that will be forced to go into WINZ and run the usual gauntlet of getting accused of being a bludging, malingering piece of shit. It promises to be a tough time for many.

A great amount of stress is needlessly created as the result of the way our economic system is structured, and this is amplified beyond breaking point when a pandemic like our current one strikes. If we are intelligent, we will take this opportunity to restructure this system so as to make ourselves more resilient to the next mass medical shock.

A recent Stuff article reported that Jacinda Ardern and other high-ranking Labour ministers had generously agreed “in principle” to remove the one week standdown period for anyone losing their jobs as a result of the coronavirus. No-one really knows why beneficiaries are made to starve for a week before being granted money, but the fact that they are creates much unnecessary misery, sometimes leading to suicide.

Removing this standdown week is a good move, but it’s a tiny measure compared to the introduction of a UBI. That would remove an enormous amount of stress from the people whose jobs were vulnerable to pandemics that impacted China – a group that will always be sizable in New Zealand. Greatly reduced stress means, in cases of sudden employment shocks, a greatly reduced number of deaths from despair.

Some are expecting that COVID-19 will be particularly virulent in America, for reasons relating to their economy. The best way to combat the pandemic is to quarantine entire areas, as China has done. America is unwilling to do this, which means that they have relied on asking people who think that they might be infected to get themselves tested and then to self-isolate – a process that might take up to three weeks.

The problem is that most American workers can’t simply leave work for three weeks. For them, three weeks with no income means getting kicked out of their houses for not making rent payments. It means getting the car repossessed, it means going hungry, it means needing to beg for an overdraft extension or miss out on healthcare. It means an immense level of stress.

A UBI would take the majority of this stress away. The knowledge that losing one’s job would not result in starvation and destitution, but merely a temporary reduction to a Spartan lifestyle, would make the necessary adaptations much easier to make. Losing one’s job would no longer mean crisis time but merely scaling back operations for a while.

A UBI would also incentivise people to not spread diseases like coronavirus to others.

Workers who are in precarious financial situations will feel compelled to go to work even when they suspect themselves to have coronavirus, on account of that they need the money. This will inevitably lead to them infecting far more people than if they had self-isolated. So not only does the lack of a UBI mean an increase in stress, it makes epidemics like COVID-19 more likely to develop into pandemics.

If New Zealand had a UBI, people who suspected themselves to be infected in a pandemic could easily arrange with their employers to be off work for a few weeks, without getting fucked by cashflow problems. These cashflow problems currently make it all but impossible to follow medical advice to self-quarantine, which exposes the entire economy to a systemic danger.

COVID-19 might not be the world-ending pandemic that many had feared. But even if it isn’t, we are still vulnerable to such a thing in the future. The introduction of a universal basic income would, above its numerous other benefits, make the national economy much more resilient to a pandemic. As it is, the ability to self-isolate is almost a luxury – perfect conditions for disaster.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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Understanding The “Justice” System

Judicial verdicts frequently provoke confusion among observers. In some cases it’s extremely difficult to understand why judgments are handed down, as punishment seems so random and arbitrary. As this essay will explain, understanding our “Justice” System is literally as simple as ABC.

In this context, ‘ABC’ refers to an algebraic formula that could also be expressed a*b*c = x, where x is the severity of the punishment.

a is the degree of inconvenience caused by the offence. The greater the inconvenience, the greater the punishment.

Murder causes a great deal of inconvenience, not least to the person killed. The family and friends of murder victims are also greatly impacted. It is for this reason that murder is also referred to as “the ultimate crime”. Other crimes like manslaughter, rape and kidnapping also cause great inconvenience, and these also carry heavy punishment.

Lesser crimes are things like theft and assault. Neither of these crimes kill anyone, and neither do they regularly cause long-standing psychological damage. Consequently, such crimes carry light punishments. Note that a equals the amount of inconvenience caused, not the amount of suffering caused, because an offence does not have to cause suffering in order to attract judicial punishment (growing medicinal cannabis is one such example).

All this seems very straightforward, and it would be, if the formula didn’t have b and c. The sad reality is that the amount of suffering caused by an offender is not the only factor that the “Justice” System takes into account. Far from it.

b is the social status of the person impacted by the offence. The higher the social status, the greater the punishment.

The highest social status is that of the Crown (or the Government). Therefore, offences that impact the Crown are punished the most severely. This is why offences that cause a minimum of suffering, but which inconvenience the Government, are punished heavily. Julian Assange is the foremost example of this today, as are the aforementioned cannabis users.

If the person impacted by the offence is of a low social status, the punishment will be low. It might be difficult to secure a conviction, because a complainant with low social status might not be considered a trustworthy witness in court. The case might not even go that far. It’s common for the Police to refuse to hear complaints from working-class people, giving them an excuse such as that they don’t have enough evidence to pursue a complaint.

Despite the bleating of social justice warriors, social status is a far more important factor than race. A case in New Zealand last year saw a man sentenced to a mere eight months’ home detention for killing a white man – a verdict easily understood once it’s realised that the victim was homeless. It can be guaranteed that if a Member of Parliament had been beaten to death in similar circumstances, the punishment would have been life imprisonment.

c is the social status of the person who committed the offence. The higher the social status, the lower the punishment.

If the person committing the offence is of a high enough social status, they simply won’t be charged for it. Jimmy Savile is the best example of this. If you can get to a high enough social status, you can rape hundreds of children and the “Justice” System simply won’t charge you. Likewise, Mike Sabin in New Zealand got off scot-free with what he did.

As David Icke has extensively written, the Western Establishment is full of pedophiles – and their high social status prevents the Police from charging or investigating them. Lesser members of the Establishment might not be able to avoid being charged or convicted, but they will nevertheless get a much lighter punishment than a working-class person would for the same offence.

Further examples are the high-profile sportsmen who are given name suppression and who avoid criminal convictions because of “promising rugby careers” or similar. The New Zealand Herald even managed to compile a playing XV of rugby players who had escaped conviction after committing a criminal offence. One player even did so despite breaking another man’s jaw.

A person of a low social status, by contrast, will get smashed for even the most minor infringement. If you’re working-class, you can expect to get a year in prison for stealing a few dozen trout. Middle-class people, like Phil Goff’s daughter, can get away with being found in possession of ecstasy, while working-class people get nailed to the wall for sharing videos, provided it inconveniences the Government enough.

The basic formula, then, for determining the severity of a judicial punishment is as follows: take the total inconvenience caused by the offence, multiply it by the social status of the person inconvenienced, and multiply this by the inverse of the social status of the person committing the offence.

The maximum theoretical punishment would come, according to this formula, from a common working-class man killing the Queen, President or Prime Minister of their political system. Whether legal or not, such an act is almost bound to result in the death penalty, and will at the least incur life imprisonment.

The minimum theoretical punishment would come from an act taken by the Government to inconvenience a common citizen. It is all but certain that no member of the Establishment will ever have to pay for the crime of conducting a War on Drugs against their own people, even though the people did not consent to it. Likewise, an immigration official allowing a murderer into the country who then murders someone will not be punished.

What best explains all of this is the fact that the ruling class ultimately invented the Justice System to protect their position. Therefore, the point of it is to smash down challengers to the ruling class and to their interests. That’s why the Justice System hardly cares at all when the Government commits crimes against its own people, or when members of the working class harm each other.

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Clown World Chronicles: What is ‘Cancel Culture’?

Unlike most of the other terms in this book, ‘cancel culture’ does not have an easily discerned meaning. It refers to a very specific mentality that is mostly found in a very specific sort of person, both of which are becoming much more common nowadays. Understanding it is necessary if one wishes to understand Clown World and where it’s headed.

It’s not currently feasible, in the current political environment, to physically exterminate one’s enemies. There are laws against that sort of thing. Therefore, the way to destroy them is to silence them.

In the old days, tyrannical kings would cut the tongues out of anyone they did not wish to speak. That’s no longer feasible either, but the sentiment motivating it can still find expression. Today, silencing people is still a matter of denying their ability to speak, but in an age of mass media it’s about denying them access to speaking platforms.

Cancel culture refers to a certain mentality where a person tries to silence anyone who they do not wish to speak. This means to get them banned from any media where they might have the chance to express themselves – a process known as ‘deplatforming’. This isn’t really a new thing, as examples of it have existed ever since the New Left came to prominence in the 60s and 70s.

One of the first victims was psychologist Hans Eysenck, who upset the Left with his research into the average IQ scores of different races. As discussed at length in a recent paper in the Personality and Individual Differences Journal, arguing in favour of human biodiversity is highly likely to aggravate the numerous fanatics who adhere to the Equalitarian Dogma.

These fanatics made a strong effort to cancel Eysenck on account of his statements that most of the differences in IQ between different races can be explained by genetic differences, and that this evolutionary explanation is much more powerful than the environmentalist explanation. Eysenck was punched in the face, had his family threatened with death and had numerous speaking arrangements cancelled by leftist agitators.

50 years later, cancel culture is as strong as ever. Jordan Peterson ran afoul of it when he refused to accept the far-leftist dogma about transgenders. Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux ran afoul of it when they wanted to speak about the science of human biodiversity in Auckland. Even VJM Publishing upset the shrieking loonies when we sold ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ t-shirts on TradeMe.

Cancel culture, then, is how the Left does violence in lieu of being able to use actual violence. The irony is that, despite constantly crying about how words are violence and that causing offence ought to be prison-worthy, it is the Left themselves who are most willing to aggressively interfere with other people’s right to free assembly and free speech.

The logic is that, if people promoting unwanted ideologies were allowed to speak in public or to hold gatherings, they would convert or at least invigorate a nonzero number of people. That someone could argue against them doesn’t matter – today’s Left affords no value at all to human reason. Merely speaking is enough to convince people in their minds.

Therefore, allowing the enemy to speak is tantamount to allowing the enemy to gain strength. If the enemy is gathering their forces, better to smash them now lest they become stronger in the future, as per Machiavelli’s maxim. Cancel culture is a form of ideological warfare, in which wrongthinkers are smashed and persecuted to the fullest legal extent possible.

Support for cancel culture is closely intertwined with an individual’s support for authoritarianism. Authoritarians don’t see anything wrong in taking away other people’s rights to express themselves, because they don’t consider other people to be full human beings. In Clown World, anyone who thinks incorrectly is a subhuman, and subhumans don’t have rights.

The problem is that people who are prevented from speaking rapidly turn to violence. John F Kennedy said “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable,” and history is replete with examples. What the cancellers don’t understand is that those cancelled don’t feel admonished or chastised – they feel enraged. This rage is easy to justify, considering that their human rights have been violated.

Cancel culture, with its egregious unreasonableness, empowers the far-right and feeds directly into their narratives about totalitarian censorship. Shutting down a person for speaking, when the right to speak is specifically protected by human rights legislation, is precisely the kind of action that makes conspiracy theories about Communist takeovers seem realistic.

Clown World promises to become ever more vicious, ruthless and insane as phenomena like cancel culture spread. It’s become so bad in some places that it’s every bit the persecution hysteria that lead to witchcraft trials. People all over the West are losing their livelihoods just for uttering opinions that contradict the bloodthirsty mob. Cancel culture may end up cancelling liberty.

This article is an excerpt from Clown World Chronicles, a book about the insanity of life in the post-Industrial West. This is being compiled by Vince McLeod for an expected release in the middle of 2020.

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Low Unemployment Is Meaningless If The Jobs Don’t Pay

Politicians like to brag about the low levels of unemployment they claim to have achieved. A low level of unemployment is presented as evidence that the economy is being managed well, and therefore that the stewards don’t need to be changed. But as this essay will demonstrate, low unemployment is meaningless if the jobs don’t lift people out of poverty.

Western politicians have been terrified of unemployment ever since World War II. Adolf Hitler frequently made reference in his rally speeches to the climbing German unemployment rate, citing it as evidence of the failure of the then-existing political Establishment. It’s taken as true by all that an unemployed man is far more likely to cause trouble.

The postwar paradigm has been characterised by a concerted effort to keep unemployment low. This worked out very well in the decades after the war, because back then a job guaranteed a certain standard of living. A full-time worker could expect to own a house and support a wife and three children. This great wealth, fairly distributed, kept revolutionary sentiments to a minimum.

Since the advent of neoliberalism in the early 1980s, the Western worker has solidly lost ground. Wages are no longer coupled with productivity (see graph at top of page), and so the buying power of the average wage has steadily declined. The average wage in New Zealand now has less than 40% of the house-buying power that it had a generation ago.

The problem is that Western politicians have continued with the assumption that so long as they keep unemployment low, all will be swell. This is a fine assumption when the average worker can afford a house and to raise three children in it. When they can’t, this assumption just leads to the face of the average worker getting pushed further and further into the shit.

If a person works full-time, but can’t meet a dignified standard of living with the proceeds from their wage, then that person is effectively a slave. Whether you’re a slave or free is not a question of how big your television is, it’s a question of how much coercion you live under. If your wage is so poor that you can’t live on it, then you’re effectively dependent on other people’s largesse. Less dependent than a beggar, but dependent all the same.

The lesson that Western politicians need to learn is that unemployment itself is not a good thing. Unemployment only has value insofar as it is conducive to ending the people’s suffering. If a working person can’t alleviate any of their suffering because their wage is so poor, then they are just as liable to become discontented as an unemployed person.

After all, the unemployment rate on slave plantations is extremely low. No-one on a slave plantation is sitting idle, or on the dole. So if unemployment alone is a factor important enough to gloat about, then it could be argued that the slave plantation model is a highly effective way to organise an economy. The absurdity of this is obvious.

It’s meaningless, then, for a politician to gloat about the low unemployment levels of their economy, as if that alone were evidence that they were running the country well. What matters is that the people are not suffering – if a large proportion of employed workers are not able to live decent lives, then the country is not run well.

The starkest problem for the Western worker is that they no longer have any negotiating power. This is the result of a combination of factors, the foremost being union-busting laws, ever-increasing technological sophistication (requiring ever-higher educations to understand) and the mass immigration of cheap labour. The capital holders have all the power, and they have used this to drive wages to the floor.

There probably isn’t any way to solve this problem within the current economic paradigm. The decoupling of wages from productivity has granted to capital holders a degree of coercion over their workers that they have not enjoyed since slavery: stories like this are now common. The only solution that seems likely is to institute a universal basic income, because this would allow workers to turn down abusive or exploitative employers.

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